MIGUEL ÁNGEL CAMPANO. FROM FIGURATION TO ABSTRACTION. 1984-1993
The art gallery Fernández-Braso presents an exhibition dedicated to Miguel Angel Campano (Madrid, 1948), artist instrumental in the development of Spanish painting, contemporary.
The exhibition covers a period of the trajectory of Campano that could synthesize what happened in one of the chapters most effervescent of Spanish contemporary art: the so-called "return" of the painting as a medium hegemonic art and the duality figuration-abstraction own artists of the 80's.
As I noted recently Armando Montesinos, curator of the exhibition Idea: Paint Strength, organized in 2014 by the Reina Sofia Museum and with the participation of artists Alfonso Albacete, Campano, Ferran Garcia Sevilla, Navarro Baldeweg and Manuel Moan, it is wrong to think that the "back" of the painting is produced with the intention to "return to a more classic, as a response to the excesses experimental of the 70s". Now, we could add that, among other reasons, because the painting never was, it continued to be very present during that decade, even though they were different in their purposes and interests. Yes it can be stated that artists such as Artist and which formed part of the New Figuration Madrid contributed definitely in the transformation of the new painting of the 80's. It was also important to the playful nature that permeated the pop art and the experimental nature's own conceptual art and abstract expressionism. This, added to the influence of american abstract expressionism and to the dissemination of the new plastic european currents as support-surface, set up a painting vigorous, spontaneous, an open, expressive and colourful, reaffirming the idea of the autonomy of art, and freeing it for other purposes, social and political. A new paint for a new time in Spain. The time of the democracy, the market, the fairs, the new galleries. The painting of a new society.
In the exhibition now we Campano we can see some of the topics addressed during the decade of the 80, and the process of transformation and detachment that your painting will be assuming as it is about the decade of the 90.
Nicolás Combarro, commissioner of his latest solo exhibition, The Painting Motherheld in the Kiosk, Alfonso de La Coruña in 2013 commented on the content of this exhibition: "A journey through a fundamental part of the extensive career of Miguel Ángel Campano, by taking paintings and drawings made between 1984 and 1993. The duality between figuration and abstraction that has marked his career, and the persistence of a gesture language itself defines his work, individualizándolo and providing consistency, while at the same time away from typecast in the current pre-existing. Landscapes painted by naturepaysage nature), still lifes (nature morte), deconstrucciones pictorial stroke cezanniano and cubism, or abstractions suprematist. The richness, diversity and capacity of reinterpretation of this unique artist who shares with us his pictorial universe through its stroke painting".
Miguel Ángel Campano was National Prize of Plastic Arts in 1996. The IVAM dedicated a retrospective on his work in the 80's in 1990. The Reina Sofia Museum on his works from the years 90 in 1999. He participated in the legendary exhibition 1980galería Juana Mordó, Madrid, 1979, and Madrid, D. F., Municipal museum, Madrid, spain, in 1980. Her works are part of important collections both national and international, such as the Hastings Foundation, New York; British Museum, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo d'art Contemporani, Barcelona, spain; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia.
The exhibition will open its doors next Thursday, April 28. The closing will take place on June 4, 2016. We will count with the presence of the artist.